Blaine Calkins

[Passports, June 17th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, Passport Canada’s narrow definition of “need” for expediting a passport is very troublesome.

If people have an upcoming ticket to Disney World, they can get an expedited passport. If they are pleading to expedite their passport so they can fly to say goodbye to their dying parent or go to Europe to help their scared, elderly mother escape from Ukraine, that is not really an urgent need according to Passport Canada.

If the minister cannot be competent, can she at least try to be compassionate?

[Passports, June 17th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, Canadians continue to have to pay Service Canada for expedited passports, despite the minister assuring this House that this would not be the case. Half the time, they are not even getting the enhanced service they are being forced to pay for. This directive first came out weeks ago, yet it is still not being implemented.

If the minister’s department does not respect her enough to follow her directives, how does she ever expect to clear the backlog?

[Public Safety, June 15th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness made it clear last night at committee that the Minister of Public Safety has misled Canadians. The Prime Minister's “Open and Accountable Government” document also reads:

Ministers cannot dissociate themselves from or repudiate the decisions of Cabinet or their Ministry colleagues unless they resign from the Ministry.

Only one of these two ministers can be right. The Prime Minister cannot agree with both of them, so which one does he agree with, and when will the Prime Minister fire the Minister of Public Safety?

[Public Safety, June 15th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Public Safety's own department confirmed that the police did not ask for the Emergencies Act to be invoked, and now the Minister of Emergency Preparedness has also publicly agreed.

In the Prime Minister's 2015 “Open and Accountable Government” document, he wrote:

For Canadians to trust our government we must trust Canadians, and we will only be successful in implementing our agenda to the extent that we earn and keep this trust.

The Minister of Public Safety has shattered that trust. When will the Prime Minister fire him?

[Public Safety, June 14th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, in 2015, the Prime Minister outlined his ministerial standards of conduct in his “Open and Accountable Government” document, and let me quote what it said:

To be worthy of Canadians’ trust, we must always act with integrity. This is not merely a matter of adopting the right rules, or of ensuring technical compliance with those rules. As Ministers, you and your staff must uphold the highest standards of honesty and impartiality....

The Minister of Public Safety no longer meets any of those standards. When will he resign?

[Public Safety, June 14th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Public Safety continues to spread misinformation and cannot be trusted. As a former Crown prosecutor, he knows full well that his choice of words matters. He would have also known, when invoking the Emergencies Act in Canada, that everything he said would be tested against the law. However, the minister cannot find anyone to corroborate his story that law enforcement asked for the Emergencies Act to be invoked.

The only matter left unresolved is the minister's resignation, so when will he resign?

[Online Streaming Act, June 13th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am going to be speaking directly to the camera and to Canadians at home so they can hear the question I am about to ask the government.

The motion that was just moved is a motion called “closure”. It is that the debate on Government Business No. 16 not be further adjourned, which means it is closure. What the government is doing through this motion and through Government Business No. 16, which we are debating today, is having a closure motion on a time allocation process, which means we will time-allocate time for Bill C-11 in committee to come to this House, time-allocate report stage in this House and then time-allocate third reading of that bill in this House. Anybody who is following Bill C-11 knows of and has great concerns about the censorship of the Internet in that bill, so what the government is doing today on a censorship bill is moving closure on a time allocation motion. They are censoring the censorship of their own censorship bill.

That is what is happening today. Why?

[Justice, June 10th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I hear from my constituents that their faith in the justice system is absolutely shaken. Rural communities repeatedly targeted by repeat offenders want serious action. Instead, the government is going to let the people who are beating, robbing and shooting at them stay out of jail for these and even more serious offences. This will make things worse.

The government's justice reforms fail to address overrepresentation of minority groups in the prison system and they also fail to enhance public safety. Why does the government not do something useful instead of just virtue signalling all the time?

[Justice, June 10th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP-Liberal government continues to ram through legislation that has criminals jumping for joy. Criminals who steal people's wallets at gunpoint, shoot up the neighbourhood, traffic in weapons or use a gun in their other criminal activities are one step closer to reduced sentences.

Liberals claim it is to address overrepresentation of Black and indigenous people in the corrections system, but they ignore that these same communities are the ones most often victimized by gun crime.

How is it that the government lacks so much compassion for victims and people at risk of violent crime?

[Main Estimates, 2022-23, June 7th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this evening, the member for Tobique—Mactaquac stood in his place in the House and voted in favour of the opposition motion. There was an assurance from the table officers that he did in fact vote and that the official record would reflect that fact. The electronic dashboard, however, continues to show otherwise. Therefore, I would like the record to show that we have brought up the matter to the House and expect Journals to have the correct recording of his vote.